Scofield brings jazz sensibilities to the jam

Scofield brings his rock- and funk-tinged uberjam crew to the Massry Center

By R.J. DeLuke

Published 2:32 pm, Wednesday, September 11, 2013

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John Scofield

John Scofield

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John Scofield

John Scofield

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John Scofield

John Scofield

Scofield brings jazz sensibilities to the jam

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John Scofield, among the upper echelon of jazz guitarists for more than a couple decades, is no stranger to the Capital Region. He has played Saratoga jazz fest often: with Miles Davis in the mid-'80s, with his own group, with Jack DeJohnette a few years ago and this year as a guest with McCoy Tyner. All giants in the genre.

At The Egg, he's played his own gigs, as well as teaming with sax great Joe Lovano. This weekend, he brings another of his projects, uberjam, to the Massry Center at The College of Saint Rose in a concert that promises to bring the thunder of funk and rock, but also the in-the-moment improvisation that is so essential to the jazz for which Scofield is known.

uberjam is a quartet that Scofield uses to exercise another side of his creativity. They recently released a new album, "Uberjam Deux" (Decca), their first in 10 years. The band is playing that music and more on an ongoing tour. On it are tunes like "Curtis Knew," dedicated to Curtis Mayfield; "The Al Green Song," a tip of the cap to the soul singer; and "Scotown," a selection Scofield said "sounds Motown-ish to me."

"I consider it a form of jazz," he said, "with jazz being a malleable form of music. It always has been. I bring the jazz concept to this, but really we're using a lot of different grooves — funk, Afrobeat, even some sort of house music stuff. Drum and bass. Real drums, plus a lot of loops and samples."

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Scofield is an underrated composer. His album "This Meets That" (Emarcy, 2007) is a prime example of clever tunes. He wrote all the songs on the new uberjam recording, though the band's other guitarist, Avi Bortnik, is co-composer on some.

"It's a fusion of musics," he adds. "You'd probably have a hard time convincing Wynton Marsalis that this was jazz. But I can't imagine this music would exist without jazz. But it's funk and rock.''

Andy Hess will play bass and drummer Tony Mason will be on hand for the Albany gig. Although he did not perform on the album, Scofield called him "a great drummer from New York."

"We play a lot of the new stuff with some of the old stuff. We do a couple of R&B covers and some classic soul tunes. On a lot of our electronic stuff, Avi has his samples. We've been playing all summer, so the band's getting really tight," said Scofield.

Even with the funk and rock flavors of uberjam, "the improvisation is very important. All of us respond to each other in that way. I take lots of solos and so does Avi, in his own way. He takes more rhythm guitar solos, then these improvised percussion battles between the drummer and the samples which (Bortnik) can control in real time, like he's playing a drum machine. But improvisation is absolutely paramount to the music. ... It turns out that a lot of music has improvisation nowadays that's not exactly, you know, bebop. But that is the link to jazz and that's the jazz mindset of this band."

Scofield has jammed out in concerts with Medeski, Martin & Wood, and this year he played gigs with Phil Lesh of Grateful Dead fame.

"He just calls me, man. He likes me bringing whatever I do into his music, which are Grateful Dead tunes. It's fun," Scofield says. "He really likes free improvisation. Free jazz. He wants to take these Dead tunes and have parts of them with completely free group improvisations, which is kind of ambitious. He's really going for something like that. It's far out."

He said 2014 will see him doing trio gigs with organist Larry Goldings and drummer Greg Hutchinson, among other things. And he had recently played a gig in Europe with the great bassist Steve Swallow and Bill Stewart, one of his favorite drummers and a frequent collaborator.

"I consider myself lucky to get to play and to play a lot, because that's what keeps you good, is having a lot of work," said Scofield. "I know for some people it's slowed down, but it hasn't for me. Europe is still a big thing for me and that's where there's a real audience for what I'm doing."